In a sure sign that the virtual currency Bitcoin has hit the mainstream, a new Trojan horse program discovered in the wild Thursday seeks out and steals victims’ Bitcoin wallets, the same way other malware goes for their banking passwords or credit card numbers.

Online theft is a fact of life nowadays, but yesterday a BitCoin user woke to find his haul of virtual currency had been plundered. A user with the handle allinvain found 25,000 BitCoins had been stolen. If the thief were to cash-out he or she would net just about $500,000 at current BitCoin-US Dollar exchange rates.

Over the years, Bitcoin has experienced ups and downs; the currency has been targeted by hackers and thieves and botnets and been victim to more than one embarrassing software glitch. But it has persevered, and this week, one can fairly say that Bitcoin came of age. On Monday, the U.S. Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network released its first “guidance” as to how “de-centralized virtual currencies” should fit into the larger regulatory regime under which currencies of all kinds are required to operate.

Bitcoin sounds like something from science fiction: A purely digital currency, created by an anonymous hacker, that operates outside the world's traditional banking systems. The four-year-old currency is very real, though, and it's trading an all-time high, tripling in value in the last two months alone. One bitcoin is was worth about $40 U.S. dollars on Tuesday, and surged on Wednesday to nearly $49. That's up from around $13 in January, and 5 cents in 2010, according to Mt. Gox, the bitcoin market's main exchange.

In Kreuzberg, Berlin, virtual currency Bitcoin has expanded off the internet to become a favoured medium of exchange in real shops and bars. Joerg Platzer, the owner of bar Room 77 is helping to establish what he believes to be the world's first Bitcoin local economy.

(U//FOUO) Bitcoin – A decentralized, peer-to-peer (P2P) network-based virtual currency – provides a venue for individuals to generate, transfer, launder, and steal illicit funds with some anonymity. Bitcoin offers many of the same challenges associated with other virtual currencies, such as WebMoney, and adds unique complexities for investigators because of its decentralized nature.

This is a talk by Bitcoin core developer Mike Hearn of Google where he discusses "The future of Bitcoin: new applications and rebuilding the banking system" at the London Bitcoin Conference 2012. Watch it to learn how Bitcoin can revolutionize more than "just" money.

Somebody in Texas claims they just sold a Porsche for 300 bitcoins, the latest sign of a bitcoin bubble. Or the rise of our new bitcoin overlords.

An Austin family bragged Tuesday night that it had sold a 2007 Porsche Cayman S for 300 bitcoins, a virtual currency that has long been little more than a curiosity for financial reporters but is suddenly breaking into the broader consciousness, maybe just in time for the whole thing to go kablooey.